Jeff Sessions must not be confirmed as AG. This man is the antithesis of everything that it means to be an American. He is a confirmed bigot and an overt racist, a favorite of KKK leader David Duke, who praised Sessions nomination as the beginning of the road to “taking America back.” Who from? Duke’s statement resonates with Trump’s own slogan of making America great again.
Sessions taking office as the Attorney General would mean the end of all civil rights prosecution. It would mean the encouragement of our failed war on drugs. He would fight for private prisons, which is a disgusting blot on our overburdened prison system. The demonstrators in the Dakotas could expect to me gunned down and imprisoned by storm troopers delegated by Sessions who is just another Right-Winger in the pocket of the fossil fuel industry.
This column has written about the stupidity of Sessions positions on a number of previous occasions but the idea of him as AG boggles the mind. The nomination itself tell us that Steve Bannon, a white supremacist from the degenerate Breitbart publishing outfit is now directing Trump. Readers of this column know that it has disagreed with Trump on almost every occasion but I never believed that he would give up his franchise to a pulsating degenerate like Bannon. We thought his ego would prevent him giving up his choices. It seems his laziness has overcome his ego and the nation will suffer if this nomination is confirmed.
*****
We all know the problems with Obamacare. It has never been a question of no one knowing the problems or how to fix them. A Republican congress, horrified at the idea of a black president getting recognition for passing his landmark legislation has fought tooth and nail to keep any fixes from happing, even to voting a ludicrous 53 times to eliminate it. but never even considering fixing it. Of course the GOP congressmen weren’t only worried about Obama getting recognition, they were also worried about heir own personal bottom line. Everyone knows that the medical industry, including, insurance companies, hospital corporations, big Pharma, medical equipment manufacturers and doctors themselves have all had their lobbyists staying busy filling the pockets of any legislator who would even look their way.
Trump says he will get rid of this program that has helped so many in desperate need of help. But current Secretary of Health and Human Services, Sylvia Burwell says it won’t be that easy. She says that Trump can’t keep a couple of provisions and dump the rest of the law. The law is written in such a way that you can’t keep something like pre-existing conditions without the other provisions of the law that pay for it. Of course Trump never worries about paying for anything because as a businessman he never fully paid anyone for their work anyway. That’s why he’s buried in over 3500 lawsuits as he enters the oval office.
In the six years since the ACA was instituted, the Republicans have fought against it and spoken a lot about getting rid of it, but there has not been one single line written that contained any of the provisions that might possibly replace it. In this as in many other areas, the GOP is witless and intellectually bankrupt. They love to make noise but they haven’t got what it takes to create solutions.
******
It is obvious from Trump’s first five appointments that he is very busy rewarding those who have been supportive of him throughout the almost two year campaign. It is just as obvious that his appointments have absolutely no connection to what is good for the nation that he will try to lead as president. It is important to remember that Trump is a man of the ratings. His ego makes it mandatory that the people love him and he is now going in a direction that will lead to the people hating him. There has been much talk of a Trump mandate but that is ludicrous, coming only from Steve Bannon, Kellyanne Conway and the like. He has actually lost the popular election by over two million votes. That’s not the stuff of which mandates are made. Trump’s massive ego demands legions of fans chanting his name and that, ultimately is what will lead to the downfall of his nominations and many of his most egregious policies.
But in order for that to happen, the American people must stay involved and that is the hardest act to pull off in politics. People have their own lives and their own problems. They work for a living, unlike most politicians, and they have families to raise and not on high-flying congressional salaries. So it becomes impossible for most people to stay involvPd in a process that only renews itself every four years and on a lesser scale every two.
It is therefore, an absolute necessity that the Democratic party and all those who are involved in any way except on the far right, take up the challenge and fight as they have never fought before to keep this country on balance. They lost the battle of this election but the war goes on. For once and only once they have to take a cue from the GOP, the party that produced the Bush/Cheney fiasco, the worst administration in American history, and then tried to make it even worse by obstructing the Obama administration to a point where they created no functioning legislation in six years of a GOP congress.
This column is not suggesting that the Democrats in congress try to stop all legislation during the Trump administration the way the Republicans did during the Obama administration. What it is saying is, it is the Democrats duty to keep Trump and his far right hacks honest, and not allow them to destroy the US Constitution or the freedoms that make America the greatest country on earth.
*****
Watched Mike Pence slither out of all pertinent questions asked by John Dickerson that had to do with Trump’s picks for his cabinet. Then Rand Paul came out with his more intelligent, more American opinions of whom we should be considering for Trump’s cabinet.
****
Grover Norquist, proving that he can, indeed, be wrong about everything, stated emphatically that we needed to break down the infrastructure improvements so that each state would be responsible for their own work in their own state. In saying this Norquist is, naturally, ignoring the physical fact that most infrastructure crosses state lines, which if his philosophy were followed, would cause unimaginable chaos in implementing a state rather than a federal solution to the infrastructure problem. Norquist has already proved he knows nothing about the tax problem or the gun problem, now he is invested in proving he knows nothing about infrastructure. He is indeed, a world-class dunce.
******
A panel of mostly Right leaning pundits recently spoke at length about the economy, a couple of them directing their attention to the need to cut Medicare and all healthcare benefits but none of them mentioning the cutting of the huge profits enjoyed by the insurance and medical delivery systems, nor did anyone mention even attempting to contain the monumental waste going on at the Pentagon. When you lose track of a trillion dollars, as the Pentagon admitted they did last year, it’s time to clean house. Everyone involved in Pentagon finances should immediately be fired and a completely new team installed. Maybe then the government will be able to find enough money to take care of our children’s health.
******
Big discussion today about Paul Ryan and what he has said, what he does say now, and how he may really feel about those in need. Forget what he says. Paul Ryan like most Republicans changes what he says at the drop of a quote. It’s what Paul Ryan wants to do that is important and at the head of Ryan’s “to do” list is ending Obamacare and cutting Medicare both of which will disastrously effect the poor and middle classes to the benefit of the rich. Joe Scarborough can talk until his tongue falls out about all the good guys who are Republicans but until those “good guys” try to do something good for someone other then themselves and the corporate pigs who lavish cash on them, they will look like bad guys to everyone but themselves.
******
There was no bigger issue in the past campaign than the way the Clinton’s Charitable Foundation was attacked by the Right. No one even mentioned the many holdings of Donald Trump and how they would, and already are, creating conflict of interest problems for the President elect. It’s obvious that Trump intends to use the Presidency o move the interests of his business holdings ahead. He has come up with multiple solutions, depending on what time of day he’s speaking, on how of how those extensive interests would be run, but all roads seem to lead to his children running them.
To be fair, the laws, which govern the retention of business interests by a person in the cabinet, do not pertain to the president. The fact that this has slipped by congress just shows what a bunch of lazy, incompetent jackasses that body really is. The whole issue would probably be a lot less important if Trump hadn’t hammered at the Clintons about their Foundation. That, as it turns out was just another of his false accusations, especially when measured against his own crooked charity, which he has been using for personal gain and not to help anyone but himself. Trump must divest or resign.